No to Domestic Violence empowers woman.

14 February is celebrated as a Valentine Day. This year it is observed under a theme called “One Billion Rising” on the valentine day and it will be celebrated every year.   One Billion Rising is a global movement, started by Eve Ensler, to end rape and sexual violence against women. The "billion" is the number of women who will be raped or beaten in their lifetime. According to the United Nations, the number is one in three women, or about one billion.

The campaign was started by playwright and activist Eve Ensler. Ensler wrote the play The Vagina Monologues). She started the organization V-DayThe idea for the organization came from the Todd Akin 'legitimate rape' and pregnancy comment controversy. Ensler was shocked at Akin's statement. She wrote an open letter in answer.

It appears that the world would like to create more awareness to end violence against women through the aforementioned campaign. As a small contribution to this initiative,   I was thinking of surprising my better half with a simple gift on this day. Unfortunately, the valentine day falls in the middle of the month and my purse gets fatter only at the end of the month to buy a gift for my better half to celebrate the Valentines day.  

Meanwhile, this made me have another perspective on having not been able to gift something for one of the special women in my life; Is this social/economical/emotional violence towards my wife?  No matter at what extent someone or some institutions make an effort to combat domestic violence, against women, systematic dictation by the social structure could be the biggest hurdle to achieve the objective. 

The social structure is the sum of the culture and civilization of the particular society. When it comes to the gender gap, there are a lot of debates going on in the world. A few experts argue that the gender issue is woven through cultural and social pattern and therefore, it becomes bit sensitive in some spaces. It is found out that the issue of gender equity breeds when some section of society continues to suppress women. And at some point society becomes more sensitive when there are more campaign and education. I have never heard my village people talking about gender equity rather they were fulfilling their own roles back at home like cooking food is responsible for women and collecting firewood is man's responsibility. 

In Bhutan, there was a practice that women were kept home to do household chores and men were sent to school. In addition, women got married or forced for early marriages resulting in less women working in the public sector. On this basis,  NGOs and other government offices responsible for women issues are trying to promote gender equality through the inclusion of women concerns in many policies of the government. Over the past year, we have seen many women being promoted to executive positions in both government and public sector. 

Bringing another big change is the opportunity for approving the ‘Domestic Violence Bill’ which is tabled for discussion in 10^th and the last session of first parliament. A few political analysts thought that the government is introducing the bill to gain women's attention to vote for them in the next election. More than the election, vote I am thinking if the bill has features addressing women's issues lying at the culture-centric society. 

Whether Domestic Bill gets approved or not, when I went to a shop to buy a gift for her, she was there in the same shop before me. We both knew that we both are there to buy gifts for each other. We discussed and decided to not to buy gifts to save us from diverting our budget from our need to such non-essential item to fulfil the gender equity gap. We already know that it is painful to divert our usual budget.